Tagged: Grandson of Science Novel

Spinning Plates

r-avatarRune Skelley likes to focus on just one novel at a time. Having to keep track of multiple story worlds simultaneously makes it harder to do any of them justice. Harder, but hopefully not impossible, because we’re bending our own rule right now.

Novel #1 (Miss Brandymoon’s Device) is getting a final round of line edits, while we’re also doing a read-through on the Science Novel in preparation for outlining the sequels. We’ve already rainbowed them, and now we need to really get that world under our nails to expand those rainbows into full-fledged outlines. The line editing is happening mostly by day, with evenings available for the read-through. It seems to be working pretty well, so far.

In addition to all of that, we’re getting feedback from our beta readers on Son of Music Novel. That means we have to keep all three of our story worlds in our heads, to some extent.

Oh, and we’re doing cover mockups for our first trilogy. Shifting from verbal creative mode to pictorial creative mode is refreshing now and then, although there’s a lot of creative verbiage flying around the writing cave while we converge on a common vision for these covers.

Sometimes, practical demands force you to spread yourself a little thin. Having a writing partner means you can keep more plates spinning.

Scouting the Locations

r-avatarWe have a habit we’re trying to break, wherein we do online research to discover exciting locations in which to set our novels, write a rough draft of said novel, and only then visit the location. This leads to edits to punch up the atmospheric details, and occasionally reblock scenes.

Last year we were a little smarter and took our field trip before we finished the first draft. We didn’t need to make any changes, and were able incorporate some fun details to give the work more verisimilitude.

This year we were brilliant! We made our pilgrimage before we set pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.

Son of Music Novel is in the hands of beta readers, and we’re revving up the engines to start composing both Son and Grandson of Science Novel. The location we visited last week is one we’ve been to before — it was our inspiration for the main setting of Science Novel — and we wanted to refresh our memories, get the feel for it again so we can do it justice in the sequels.

Sadly we won’t be able to visit all of our inspiration sites. One no longer exists in the real world, and some of the others are in Russia. We have, in fact, been to Russia, but it’s been a few years, and we stuck to the touristy stuff when we were there. No secret labs or long-forgotten cold war bunkers on our itinerary, alas. But if we ever decide to set a novel in St Petersburg’s Hermitage or the Peterhof Palace, we have a ton of pictures to use for reference.

Another Major Milestone Passed

r-avatarOur double-complete rainbow is double-completed!

A few nights ago, we laid out the rainbows for both of the sequels to the Science Novel, with one flowing directly into the other. At that point, the second one was only about two-thirds done, but we were hot on the trail of a plot wrinkle that would give shape to the remainder of the story. So by the end of that session, our colorful array of paper squares reached its final form.

Our next step was to sleep on it. Not physically on the rainbow, of course. But this did mean that Lady Marzipan had to be banished from the Auxiliary Writing Cave for another night so we could leave things laid out. The next evening, Jen read off the first rainbow a row at a time while Kent typed up a synopsis of sorts, something we refer to as our prose outline. If Kent didn’t need to sleep, we might have powered through and done both of them, but Lady Marzipan had to stay out for yet another night. But finally, next time, we got there!

Typing up the prose outlines moves the story development process into a new phase. It’s not just transcription; it’s a chance to catch gaps and inconsistencies — looking at things through a different lens — and start getting a feel for the rhythms of the stories.

So what’s next? We lay them aside and work on something else. Specifically, we’re assessing critique notes on the Music Novel. We like to give stuff some time to rest as part of our process, and we don’t like to try to work on more than one book at a time.

Letting Your Villain Spread Those Villainous Wings

r-avatarStill outlining the second sequel to the Science Novel, but we think we’re past the midpoint in devising a plot. It should get easier from here on out, although we’ll inevitably hit a few more snags.

One of the key moments this week was when we gave our primary baddie a little more latitude by having some of the other evil characters target a different victim. The way we’d initially blocked things, Main Bad Guy was lured into a trap but then turned the tables. The new setup makes him proactive rather than reactive, which is good (even though in this case it’s evil). Another benefit of the change is that it brings back someone who would have otherwise retired from the story with hardly a scratch. The outlook is a bit more complicated now, which is usually a sign that you’re doing it right.

This proactive-vs-reactive concern applies to characters in every part of the moral spectrum. You might have been advised to make sure your protagonist isn’t just the person stuff happens to happen to, and what we’re saying is it applies equally to the antagonist. Look for plot nodes where any of the major characters become the object rather than the subject and take them apart to find a better move.

This is a great illustration of why we like to do such detailed up-front work. Had we been flying by the seat of our collective pants, this minor change would be a nightmare to implement. This way we will be able to concentrate on the characters’ voices, and vividness of description, and sentence rhythm… the parts of novel writing that are actually fun.

It Happens When You Aren’t Looking

r-avatar[Location: auxiliary writing cave, interior. Kent and Jen enter with hot beverages, colorful paper squares, and steno pads. While Kent relearns (again) how to sit on a couch, Jen starts filling a steno page.]

Kent: What are you —

[Jen holds up exactly one finger for exactly one second, then resumes her mad scrivening.]

Kent: Should we start marking things on the cards?

Jen: Shhh.

[Five minutes pass, then Jen presents the still-glowing steno pad for inspection. Kent is moved almost to tears by the majesty he beholds there. On a single page, Jen has captured the essential form of Grandson of Science Novel, that which has resisted them for weeks. It’s like the surgeon’s photo, mysterious and evocative and somehow all the more true by dint of its artifice.]

Kent: What’s with the three lines that have stars?

Jen: Those are the places that aren’t really there. Deep, huh?

[Hold for applause.]

Ever since we decided that it made sense to do the outlining now for both sequels to the Science Novel, we’ve been hammering away at the third tale in the set. We confirmed that there would be plenty of story left to tell after the middle volume, but it was just sort of all in a pile. And we knew stuff was missing from the pile, but we couldn’t tell how much; how big were the gaps, and where were they?

The other night, some kind of threshold was reached in Jen’s creative faculties. As we’ve described previously, after you tell yourself things enough times they feel true, and when they feel true they become sturdy enough to lash together into a coherent structure. (Or, maybe the pieces are fastened by means of a goose wrench.) In this case, it was a structure that had three “and then a miracle occurs” linkages. However, that very night we filled in two of those gaps. The third one remains, but discussions about how to fill it have been fertile and are revealing new levels we can explore over the course of the book as a whole.

Having a variety of ways to look at your ideas is important to help you get unstuck. Having a partner doubles (at least) your chances of someone being lit from within by the creative spark you need to get past a particular obstacle.

Did We Say “Geniuses”?

r-avatarWork progresses slowly on the outline for Grandson of Science Novel. It’s probably no more sluggish than the corresponding stage of things for the book that precedes it, but the headwind is kind of killing our morale.

Coming off the wrap-up of Son of Science Novel’s outline, we had a lot of momentum. Also, we were brimming with ideas for the third book because there was stuff — lots of stuff! — that was left deliciously untidy at the end of the second one. Thus we were counting on maintaining our momentum and having half the work already done.

Er, yeah. No.

The ideas are great, but what we’re discovering is they’re not the hard part. The stuff in between them, the connective tissue, that’s the challenge. We got ourselves persuaded that it wouldn’t feel like starting all over, but it does. Dammit.

The advantages of having both books in a state of high plasticity are still valid. We’re still confident that working on them in tandem is the smart move. What we’re learning is that “time savings” probably isn’t among those advantages.

If You Say It Enough Times

r-avatarDuring the early phase of creating a new novel, which consists almost entirely of talking and note-taking with occasional forays into rainbow architecture, we have to figure out what is and what isn’t part of the story. Basically we have to figure out from scratch what’s true.

That’s a tough process sometimes. There’s a lot of hedging our bets and playing with counterfactuals, and it can become really swampy. If you haven’t ruled out at least some of the theoretical possibilities, then you have to be able to hold all of them in your head. (Good luck with that if your story is complex.) Because that fills your head with overlapping contradictions, none of it will feel true.

So that’s the basic lesson: you have to stop hedging and fix certain events in place, at some point. (Or, you have to pretend they’re fixed. By the time you’re revising a finished draft, it’s unlikely that all these truths will still be true. But most of them will be.)

Kent made the observation the other night that at some point the hypothetical story beats we were discussing had started to feel — a little — like things that had really happened. Where previously had been multiple, mutually incompatible possibilities, there was left a clear notion that “this is how it went down.” Getting to the stage where you can internalize the narrative makes it much easier to write about it. Now you know what happened, which leaves you free to focus on doing justice to the tale instead of being on the spot to invent it as you go.

Working with a partner at the story development stage provides a setting where the tale can be told and retold as many times as it takes, until it starts coming out the same way every time. It lets you leverage the instinctual storytelling impulses. Eventually, it gives you an outline so you can start actually writing.

Don’t think of your outline as a constraint on your creativity. It is an expression of that creativity. It’s your diagram of what’s true, which no one else could know.

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

r-avatarDouble your plotting?

Sure, why not!

The outline for Son of Science Novel came together pretty well about a week ago. We don’t know all the details yet, but we have a complete through-line, beginning to end. The ending that we envision allows for this book to stand on its own while also throwing to the next book, Grandson of Science Novel, which will finish out the trilogy.

In a fit of madness and/or brilliance we decided to go ahead and plot out Grandson (Novel #8) before hammering out all of the details for Son. (The plot hammer is another tool in our writing kit, used in conjunction with the goose wrench and the monkey wrench.)

Our previous trilogy was not written this way. We were still learning what worked for us, and developing our process. Now, though, we are geniuses, and we’re ready to tackle anything.

The advantage of getting into the final book before tightening everything up in the second is that we have the freedom to make adjustments all throughout the story. The downside is that too much freedom can be paralyzing. When you try to keep too many options open it’s impossible to hold the whole thing in your head. The plot threads ramify and peter out in dead ends instead of cascading smoothly through a flow chart to a satisfying conclusion.

In the week that we’ve been talking about Grandson, we’ve made a lot of progress. Almost all of the characters will carry over from the previous two books, so very little work is needed on their backstories. That leaves us free to really tighten the screws and make their lives miserable. Fitting fates have been devised for almost everyone, much to their chagrin.

Had we waited to outline this third book until the second was written (or even just thoroughly outlined) we would have felt constrained by what was on the page. Changes could be made, but would have meant a lot of wasted effort. So far we haven’t devised anything new that necessitates big changes in Son, but we have uncovered some thematic elements that will resonate more if we introduce them earlier, and we discovered the solution to a lingering question. In Son we had gotten as far as “there’s something wrong with this character’s process,” and by talking through Grandson we’ve decided what that “something” is.

Will we write the two stories back-to-back? Doubling up on everything else (right down to the number of writers we are!) has worked in our favor, so it seems quite likely.